This Changes Everything

Disclaimer: The following micro fiction, in it’s entirety, is my own. I do not claim to own, in whole or in part, the lyrics found throughout the body of the story. The lyrics are copyright to Adema, their records, and their producers.

I never thought I was strong enough…..

Her gaze wanders to the microwave, searching it’s face for some remote comfort. Through the wan yellowed and honey-combed design, the lime-hued numbers waver in a curtain of unshed tears. It’s 1:00 a.m. She’ll find no comfort this night. Nervously, her teeth worry her bottom lip as she shifts on the futon, eyes locked this time upon the silent, unmoving door. Maybe he’ll call. Maybe. Maybe…she closes her eyes and shakes her head, a fine misting of tears sliding forth like opals conjured from grief onto her cheeks, scattering in all directions like overfed cats coaxed from beneath the sofa by a brisk prod of the broomstick to land like damp spiders against the wall and carpet. He won’t call. He never calls. His sister has long since abandoned her bated-breath anticipation of waiting for her big brother to come in and tell her a bedtime story. She waited for hours, blankets tucked beneath her chin, worn stuffed dog resting upon her lap, eyes bright, a shine with anticipation of their Friday night ritual of a new story he had created just for her. Tales of dragons and princesses and magic talking frogs and bold knights. She stayed up long after her mother came in to kiss her forehead and tuck her in, turning the lights off as she departed. The lights dimmed, faded like her hope. And her small frame shook with great, racking sobs until her eyes grew too sore to expel further sorrow. She sleeps now, and in her slumber she waits for him still. She doesn’t understand why her Knight has exchanged his great white steed for an aging ass, and he will spare her his empty reasons.

To handle raising my own son….

2:00 a.m. With a soft, almost inaudible click, the key turns in subtle near-silence in the lock gradually opened the bedroom door, with as much stealth as his drug-hazed hands could manage. The door, long-standing and stubborn, opened with the grating groan of an elderly person, seeming to rebel, as if realizing his wish to be silent and retaliating maliciously at having to render service at this hour. He stepped over the threshold of the house, as delicate as a bather testing the waters with a single toe, and resumed stealthily tip-toeing down the insulated hallway, halting in a sudden flare of uncertainty at the spiral stairwell. The stairwell was crafty, silent to the bone on some occasions, as if to bolster one’s courage, until one hit the seventh step, which was old and worn, deep grooves worn into it, so that it sagged a bit more than the others. The Seventh Step, as he called it, canalizing it even in his tone and manner of speech when he referred to it mentally, would let out such a horrid squall when a foot descended upon it, that he was sure it caused the dead in the cemetery the next county over to rise up in protest of his failed stealth. He cautiously eased his weight onto one step. muttered and blurted to itself for a moment, during which his heart took up residency in the region of his throat. It grumbled a bit, much like a sleeper momentarily awoken, before lapsing into silence once more. So it was that he made his way up the steps virtually unfettered, until he reached the seventh step. It seemed to him that the step was chuckling sinisterly to itself, waiting for his errant foot to strike its center, whereupon it would let out a squeak akin to a tyrannosauruses roar. Which it did, and almost seemed to delight in doing so. It was then he heard his name called sharply from the darkness.

You always fear what you’ve never done…

For a moment, he debated vaulting up the steps and into his room. As if reading his intentions, she called him again. Reluctantly, he descended down the steps, blinking like a rodent as she flicked on the overhead lights, momentarily blinding him. There she stood in her night gown, eyes red and puffy from countless tears, hair a wild swirl, as though it couldn’t quite settle on a final direction to go in. “Where have you been?” she demanded, voice oddly soft. He looked at his feet and shuffled them for a moment. He still had his work uniform on. “Working,” he said at last, gaze meeting her own defiantly. “It’s 2:00 a.m. Ukrops closed at 11:00.” She could smell the pot on him, see the glaze in his eyes. Inwardly, her heart broke. This was her son. The son who had perfect manners, a beautiful smile, and did well in school. Until recently. Her son, who was supposed to be “Going Places.” Whatever happened to the little boy with the raucous jay-bird laughter, who wore a flowerpot on his head when he lost his conductor’s cap on the train? He was no more, lost in the tangled web of lies and the obscuring haze of pot smoke.

I hope he’ll know me when I come home….

He was caught in another complex lie. They both knew it. But he’d be damned if he’d admit to his mother where he’d really been. Why couldn’t she just get off his case and mind her own damn business? Hadn’t he done enough? Wasn’t he the perfect Golden Boy she’d always wanted, after years and years of doing precisely what she had told him to? He couldn’t wait to get out of here, to leave her and move in with his girlfriend…which, if all went well, would happen in less than a week’s time. God, how he hated it here…hated having to answer to her. Having to lie to her. When he did not answer, it was his mother who swore. Loudly and unexpectedly. He jumped, a guilt-stricken look on his face that he tried in vain to mask. “You’ve been smoking pot,” she accused, her voice rising to a shrill, voice-cracking pitch. Again came the tears. Always with the tears. Tears wouldn’t wash him clean. Wouldn’t make him her little boy again. She ached to hold him, to comfort him. But instead…she sighed. She looked old then, so old and so defeated. “Go to bed. We’ll talk about this tomorrow. Don’t even think about leaving this house. You’re grounded.”

Nothing’s gonna change my love for you….

She giggled delightedly, belatedly remembering to muffle the sound with a hand over her mouth. She snuggled deeper into the shelter of her stuffed animals. He would never think to look for her here, in her closet, hidden among her stuffed animals. In fact, she could hear his heavy tread as he exaggerated his search for her, constantly questioning where she was in a sing-song manner. His footsteps faded, then returned. Faded, returned. Faded, returned. Her heart quickened each time his footsteps receded. He was leaving her. He was leaving her and he was never coming back…tears prickled like irate ants at the back of her eyes. If he left, who would play with her? Who would tell her ghost story that scared her silly, and yet she never could get enough of them? She loved him. And he loved her….right? Suddenly, the door of her closet rolled back with a complaining grumble. Light lanced into the darkened corners. Suddenly, hands dove into the thick fur of the piled-on creatures, seizing her. She squealed, then as he lifted her aloft. “Gotcha!” He cried, swinging her around. She laughed delightedly. She laughed herself breathless as he set her down and tickled her until she could no longer shriek or laugh. He grinned at her, and tousled her hair in a loving manner. “Want a snack?” She nodded eagerly. His snacks were better than mom’s…not that she’d ever tell her that. What made them good was that she usually got candy and chips in place of apple and cheese slices with a glass of juice. “Okay. I’ll be right back, okay? You stay here.” With that, he clomped down the stairs, two at a time…his usual, quirky rhythm. That was how she always knew it was him. He took steps like he took life. More than one step at a time.

I love my child, he’s got his mother’s smile….

She waited. And waited. Her stomach snarled with the complaint of hunger. Still no snack. Suddenly, the roar of a car filled her ears. Curious, she peered out of her window, just in time to see her brother enter a car and speed away. In a haze of disappointed confusion, she wandered down the stairs. Her snack lay on the table. She sat down, not tasting the food as it passed her lips. Slowly, steadily, a single tear slid down her face to land with a silent splash onto her plate. When her mother came home later that evening, a devastated little girl rushed to her arms, burying her head in chest, the tears coming freely as she told her mother that he was gone, had left the house. Had left her world. Had left her.

I’m so fortunate….so fortunate.

In a fit of uncharacteristic rage, she upended her beloved box of Lego’s onto her brother’s bedroom floor. She then busied herself by placing them in strategic areas around his bed, in just the right spots to injure the soles of an unwary, unseeing foot. Her mother sat on the futon, at a loss. It’s one of the hardest things in the world, being a single mother. Later that night, he attempted to sneak out of the house. Or so was his intent. Unaware of his sister’s devious behavior, he stepped upon a lego. And then another, and yet another. He staggered and swore, and made such a general racket that his mother intercepted him and sent him back to his room.

Life can get tight, but I will make it right. I’m so fortunate. So fortunate.

A week later, he was gone. He and his girlfriend packed his things and moved out, into her apartment on the other side of town. His sister experienced what was perhaps her first ever murderous impulse, furthered along months later after her beloved Sega was destroyed in a lover’s quarrel. She grew listless, and would look for hours at a time out of the window, hoping against hope that he would come back to her. The street outside was silent….and in that moment, her trust slipped and shattered.

I hate to learn what meant more to me. My family became everything.

A year later found him back on the streets. His constant fights with his girlfriend had gotten them evicted from their apartment due to frequent complaints. And so, like a beaten dog, he slunk back home, in search of a handout of welcome and forgiveness. To make it up to her, to chase that betrayed look from her eyes, he bent low to her and asked those scared words, “Want to go the playground?” She nodded, delighted. This was a rare offer indeed. And so they went. At first, he joined her on the slides, pushing her gently, smiling as she chuckled, and obeying her requests to go “high, high, like the sky” on the swings. Until his buddies showed up. With an elaborate display of hand slapping, he abandoned her once more.

Forlorn, she sits alone on the swing, trailing her feet in the dirt, swinging back and forth every now and then by pushing herself onto her tiptoes and releasing, stealing the occasional glance over to the group of enthusiastically rambunctious boys. The shoving has become rougher, more frequent, threatening to tip each other off balance. The voices get louder, rougher. There’s swearing. It happens quickly, and she isn’t sure how. But one of the boy’s has her brother in a headlock.

She is up and off the swing, chains rattling, as if echoing her alarm. She closes the distance, pushing through the circle of onlookers, hooking her fingers into the fabric of her brother’s shirt, pulling. Laughter, then—the boy lets him go. And she leads him home, knuckles white---afraid to let go of him. Knowing, in the back of her mind, it’s inevitable she will have to.

I miss you more than you’ll ever know.

With the passage of years, the boy becomes a man. A man who never returns calls or e-mails on time, letting weeks stretch between them, if he bothers to answer them at all. They become less and less frequent. She lets him go. They all let him go. But they still hope. The knight of childhood fantasies exchanges the white horse for aging cars. Aging cars that take him and his wife far away, states away---leaving only tire tracks with cracks in countries…and hearts. The phone rings once on birthdays. Christmases. The infrequent weather report and polite small talk. The sister is a junior in high school. She keeps every e-mail he sent. All twelve of them. One or two for each year. A summer visit to South Carolina yields adventure. Holding hands, the two of them venture into the darker depths of the ocean, and speak softly over the song of the waves. They talk of their childhood, speak of their mother, of beloved memories. They walk along the beach as the sun sets, their footprints now roughly the same size, though they are always smaller in her mind’s eye. He reaches out a hand and ruffles her hair, already tangled by the wind. For an instant, they face the horizon the next day will bring together.

On the morning of her departure, they watch the morning sun on the ocean, darkened by the shadow of a lone passing brown pelican. “Where has the time gone?” He asks. She has no answer. She merely squeezes his hand, and is for once grateful that the wind dries the tears on her cheeks before he can see them.

I wish that I could just leave, come home.

He moves to Mexico a few years later. The distance felt in the heart is now a question of miles, as well. Hundreds and hundreds. One for every tear.

Nothing’s gonna change my love for you.

Christmas eve, the phone rings. Her mother answers. It’s her son. And he has some news. His wife is pregnant. Full circle.

I love my child, he’s got his mother’s smile. I’m so fortunate, so fortunate.

Christmas. The brother of ten years past walks through the door as if he’d never left---full of laughter and love and a babe in arms. A glorious, smiling boy who stares intently into the eyes of those who hold him as if to say, ‘I know you. I do.’ The sister is a Freshman in college. Long, late night talks between mother and son. Sister and brother. Tears of joy. Tears of sorrow, when he leaves.

Full circle. Full heart. Their chapter thought missing in the story of his life has been stapled back in. There is peace.